This CPC-1232 tank car represents an upgrade over older models criticized for being easily punctured, but critics say there’s still much to be desired. (Daniel Potter/KQED)

Facing growing apprehension among Californians, railroads and oil companies are trying to allay fears over the dangers of hauling crude oil into the state.

Tensions have been heightened by a spate of derailments, as well as a recently unearthed government report with some sobering projections for the potential cost to life and property from such incidents in coming years. Federal regulators are weighing stricter rules governing everything from modernized braking systems to new speed limits.

In a rare move Tuesday in Sacramento, officials with California’s two major railroads, Union Pacific and BNSF, held a media briefing explaining safety measures ranging from computerized stability controls to special foam for choking out fires.

At the California State Railroad Museum, Pat Brady, a hazardous materials manager for BNSF, showed off a newer model tank car with half-inch thick “head shields” – metal plates extending halfway up on either end. The car was also equipped with “skid protection,” Brady said, pointing to a nozzle underneath that’s designed to break away in a derailment, leaving the valve itself intact, to avert spills.

This tank car, the CPC-1232, is supposed to be safer and harder to puncture than the older DOT-111 version, but it’s facing skepticism after several exploded last week when a train hauling North Dakota crude through West Virginia derailed.

Union Pacific’s William Boyd showcases a locomotive simulation that conductors can use as a training device. It will slow down virtual speeding trains and issue warnings to the operator. (Daniel Potter/KQED)

Industry officials at the Sacramento briefing were reluctant to comment about that incident, saying not all the facts are in yet, but several emphasized the importance of keeping trains from derailing to begin with, and claiming that more than 99.99 percent of such shipments arrive safely.

Both BNSF and Union Pacific said tracks used to haul crude through California undergo daily visual inspections, said Union Pacific spokesman Aaron Hunt, as well as a battery of high-tech tests.

“We’re using lasers to measure track gauge and track profile to keep trains on tracks,” he said, and also “pushing ultrasonic waves into our rail to detect potential cracks early.”

Hunt says in a typical month, Union Pacific brings in 1,000 to 1,200 cars loaded with oil, a tiny fraction of the company’s in-state freight. BNSF said its oil haul is even less: about two trains a month. But some predict such shipments could soar in the near future.

Also represented at the briefing was Valero Energy, which is hoping to start bringing two fifty-car oil trains a day to its refinery in Benicia.

“Valero as a company has acquired over five thousand rail cars,” said Chris Howe, a health and safety manager at Valero’s Benicia facility. “We’re able to get a number of them committed to our project, so we will likely be using Valero cars of these newer designs.”

The industry’s shift away from the DOT-111 model is “a useful step,” says Patti Goldman, managing attorney with Earthjustice, who adds that the newer cars are still “not nearly safe enough.”

“What you need to do to prevent catastrophes when trains do leave the tracks is have far better tank cars to be able to prevent the leaks and explosions in the first place,” says Goldman.

Earthjustice is in a legal fight pushing for stronger oversight and regulation. Goldman charges that it’s taking a long time to fully phase out older models because the industry is more focused on growing fleets rapidly.

“That’s just inexcusable,” she says. “We don’t think they’re allowed to do that. We think they need to get these hazardous tank cars off the rails before they start increasing the amount of crude oil that’s going to be shipped on the rails.”

Environmental activists inflate a long balloon to mock a pipeline during a demonstration in front of the White House in Washington, DC, on February 3, 2014 to protest against the Keystone pipeline project. (Jewel Samad /AFP/Getty Images)

The White House has notified the Senate that President Obama has, as promised, vetoed congressional legislation to fast-track approval of the Keystone XL pipeline project.

“Through this bill, the United States Congress attempts to circumvent longstanding and proven processes for determining whether or not building and operating a cross-border pipeline serves the national interest,” Obama said in the notification to the Senate.

The U.S. State Department has been reviewing the pipeline for more than six years, working to determine whether it is in the national interest. Congressional Republicans want to circumvent that process and grant a permit immediately.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the Senate will vote no later than March 3 to override Obama’s veto.

Republicans would need a two-thirds majority in each chamber to override Obama’s veto. They do not appear to have enough votes to do that.

]]>http://blogs.kqed.org/science/2015/02/24/obama-vetoes-keystone-xl-pipeline-bill/feed/1US-POLITICS-ENVIRONMENT-KEYSTONE-PROTESTEnvironmental activists inflate a long balloon to mock a pipeline during a demonstration in front of the White House in Washington, DC, on February 3, 2014 to protest against the Keystone pipeline project. (Jewel Samad /AFP/Getty Images)A Visit to Apple’s Secret New Headquartershttp://blogs.kqed.org/science/audio/a-visit-to-apples-secret-new-headquarters/
http://blogs.kqed.org/science/audio/a-visit-to-apples-secret-new-headquarters/#commentsMon, 23 Feb 2015 14:00:06 +0000http://blogs.kqed.org/science/?post_type=audio_reports&p=27379

The main building will be a concrete and glass ring a mile in circumference. “Everything in the building is designed to accommodate these curves,” says Dan Whisenhunt, the company’s Vice President of Real Estate and Development. (Anya Schultz/KQED)

The world’s largest Apple product is taking shape in Cupertino.

Apple is just one of several huge tech companies in the Bay Area building corporate campuses this year. But its project is perhaps the most secretive.

So when I asked for a tour, I didn’t expect to get one. Other reporters told me the company rarely talks to the press.

But Apple’s press team seemed to like the idea of talking about the green innovations in their new building, especially if the story would have presence on NPR. We proposed that angle for its connections to science. A tour was granted and on a sunny day in February, I found myself squeezed into an Apple Jeep with Dan Whisenhunt, the company’s VP of Real Estate and Development, and Lisa Jackson, who was appointed by President Obama to head the Environmental Protection Agency, and left in 2013 to become Apple’s VP of Environmental Initiatives.

Our first stop was a scale model of the new campus.

A scale model of the site shows the building set in a wooded landscape. The company contracted with an arborist to raise more than 6,000 trees offsite, which will later be transplanted to the campus. (Anya Schultz/KQED)

Known as “the spaceship” – or, if you prefer, the “donut” – the building will be a glass and concrete ring, a mile in circumference, surrounded by trees and rolling hills. Much of the new building will be sculpted from the remains of the former Hewlett Packard campus that used to be on site. Fifteen thousand people will work here.

Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs oversaw plans for the campus. In 2011, six months before his death, Jobs appeared before the Cupertino City Council to win support for the project and show the city what it might expect.

“Apple has grown like a weed,” he told the council. The company needed to build a new campus.

“If we can’t, then we have to go somewhere like Mountain View,” Jobs told the council.

“We’d take our current people with us. We’d give up, and over years sell the land here and the largest tax base would go away. That wouldn’t be good for Cupertino and it wouldn’t be good for us either.”

These buildings on the former Hewlett Packard site were ground down for use in the construction of Apple’s new campus.

Apple, says Rick Kitson, a city spokesman, is “unquestionably” the largest taxpayer in Cupertino.

According to a 2013 economic analysis, the city took in $8 million in net revenue from Apple between 2012-2013, 18 percent of the total city budget.

The company projected that if they built the new campus in Cupertino, net revenue from Apple would rise to $11 million.

Apple stayed. Today, its construction site, near I-280, is shrouded in intrigue.

The site has become a magnet for amateur drone operators who fly over the campus on weekends, capturing sweeping aerial images of the vast construction site.

Some videos have pounding techno soundtracks over captions like “the fourth floor of the parking garage is almost complete.”

I asked Dan Whisenhunt whether he’d watched them. He said he had, and that as long as the drones stayed off Apple’s property, it was the operators’ right to fly them. He didn’t sound enthusiastic.

“There’s nothing wrong with sharing progress along the way,” he said. “But if it were our preference we’d like to share it in phases that are meaningful to us.”

The exterior of the building will include curved glass panels, each 46 feet long by 10 feet tall. “The largest type of structural glass that exists out there,” says Whisenhunt. (Anya Schultz/KQED)

Jackson and Whisenhunt were eager to talk about the campus’ many green features.

In a related endeavor, Apple CEO Tim Cook recently announced plans to build a nearly $850 million solar farm in Monterey County. That farm will produce enough electricity to offset the company’s 52 California stores, as well as its data centers and offices, Apple says.

At the new headquarters in Cupertino, toilets, cooling towers and landscape irrigation systems will use recycled water imported from municipal wastewater treatment centers.

Adjustable louvers on the exterior walls will control air flow through the building, says Jackson, so that employees will rarely need heat or air conditioning.

And then there’s the on-site concrete plant.

Whisenhunt says 95 percent of the old site – including HP buildings, sidewalks and other features, is being recycled onsite rather than trucked to a landfill. That material is being ground down and used to construct the large concrete pieces that serve as a frame for the new circular building.

“It keeps all the cement trucks within the bounds of this site and off the road,” said Whisenhunt. “So it’s another innovation in construction that we’re proud of on this site.”

What’s the budget for this project? Whisenhunt smiled. “We have one,” he said.

About eighty percent of the new site will be open space, much of it forested.

Standing in front of the scale model, Jackson remarked that while the building itself was beautiful, most striking to her were the thousands of trees that would eventually grow onsite, including some 6,000 mature trees that the company has been raising offsite and will eventually transplant to the campus.

It will be, she said “almost like a forest of our own.”

When I asked Jackson asked how much of that open space would be open to the public, Apple’s media hander signaled her not to answer.

I rephrased the question. Whisenhunt replied that the campus will be surrounded by a fence.

The campus will have a visitors’ center, the handler informed me later.

Critics have called the building insular.

Allison Arieff, an architecture critic for the New York Times, says there’s more to sustainability than solar panels and recycled water. It’s about engaging the community too. “They’ve definitely taken the approach of building as object, with not so much interest in anything else that’s happening apart from that object,” says Arieff.

The campus includes a theatre for company events. (Anya Schultz/KQED)

Critics have also asked why the company didn’t consider putting its campus into a downtown, such as San Jose’s, where it could revitalize underused areas and provide easier commute options for employees.

“This isn’t an office building,” Jackson says. “This is an R&D facility. Think of a national lab. Think of NASA. That’s the level of work that’s happening here.”

The new campus is expected to open in late 2016.

]]>http://blogs.kqed.org/science/audio/a-visit-to-apples-secret-new-headquarters/feed/1apple3(Anya Schultz/KQED)apple9(Anya Schultz/KQED)These buildings on the former Hewlett Packard site were ground down for use in the construction of Apple’s new campus.These buildings on the former Hewlett Packard site were ground down for use in the construction of Apple's new campus.Apple campusIMG_0186(Anya Schultz/KQED)Printapple6State Proposes Rules to Protect Drinking Water From Fracking Wastehttp://blogs.kqed.org/science/2015/02/10/state-proposes-rules-to-protect-drinking-water-from-fracking-waste/
http://blogs.kqed.org/science/2015/02/10/state-proposes-rules-to-protect-drinking-water-from-fracking-waste/#commentsWed, 11 Feb 2015 00:28:20 +0000http://blogs.kqed.org/science/?p=27168

A pump jack and hydraulic fracturing tanks next to a farm in Lost Hills, Calif. (David McNew/Getty Images)

California officials have outlined a plan to make sure oil companies don’t contaminate aquifers where the water is clean enough to drink.

The rules proposal was drafted under pressure, amid a federal deadline and reports that, for years, state regulators gave oil companies permission to inject wastewater into aquifers that were supposed to be protected.

For every barrel of petroleum that oil companies bring up, they get several more barrels of wastewater, which can be tainted with salt and chemicals.

For California, the country’s third-largest oil producer, this adds up to billions of gallons of wastewater each year, the bulk of which is simply injected back underground.

The White House said Wednesday it wants to slash methane emissions from the crude oil and natural gas industry in the U.S. by up to 45 percent below 2012 levels as part of the Obama administration’s Climate Action Plan.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has enabled the U.S. to be the world’s leading crude oil and natural gas producer, and the EPA expects that methane emissions from the oil and gas industry could rise more than 25 percent by 2025.

To prevent that from happening, the EPA will be proposing rules later this year that aim to slash oil and gas methane emissions 40 to 45 percent compared to 2012 emissions by 2025. The proposed rule, which is expected to be unveiled this summer and finalized in 2016, will regulate emissions exclusively from new crude oil and natural gas wells.

Methane is up to 35 times as potent at trapping heat as carbon dioxide over a period of about a century, and the oil and gas sector is a major source of those emissions in the U.S. (Carbon dioxide is much more prevalent in the atmosphere and is still the major greenhouse gas.) About 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2012 was methane, about 30 percent of which came from the oil and gas industry, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates. (Much of the rest comes from livestock, particularly cattle.)

The methane rule comes after the EPA announced in December that it is planning to require energy companies to report more greenhouse gas emissions, including methane, from fracking operations, natural gas compressor stations and pipelines.

The EPA is also considering requiring the use of remote sensing technology to measure methane emissions from oil and gas operations as a way to get a better count of the methane leaking from fracking, pipelines and other oil and gas-related machinery.

“There are significant, highly cost-effective opportunities for reducing methane emissions from this sector,” Dan Utech, Obama’s climate and energy advisor, told the Associated Press. “We’re confident we can do this in a cost-effective way.”

Climate Centralis an independent organization that researches and reports on climate change.

Gov. Jerry Brown spoke to a joint session of the Legislature in Sacramento during his inaugural address on Monday.(Andrew Nixon/Capital Public Radio)

During his fourth inaugural address in Sacramento Monday, Gov. Jerry Brown focused heavily on energy efficiency, calling for further cuts in consumption as a way to combat global warming.

“Taking significant amounts of carbon out of our economy without harming its vibrancy,” Brown said, “is exactly the sort of challenge at which California excels.”

‘This is exciting, it is bold and it is absolutely necessary.’– Gov. Jerry Brown

The governor recommended three items including increasing renewable energy production, decreasing petroleum use and making buildings and heating fuels more efficient.

“This is exciting,” Brown said, “it is bold and it is absolutely necessary if we are to have any chance of stopping potentially catastrophic changes to our climate system.”

California’s landmark greenhouse gas emissions bills mandated that 33 percent of the state’s energy must come from renewable sources like wind, solar, geothermal and hydropower by 2020. During his speech, Brown upped that goal to 50 percent by 2030.

Currently, about 20 percent of California’s energy comes from renewables, and the latest report from the California Energy Commission says that number should reach 25 percent by 2016.

“California is already 40 percent more energy-efficient than the rest of the nation, thanks to the work that, interestingly, GovernorBrown started when he was governor the first time,” said Terry Tamminen, former Secretary of California’s Environmental Protection Agency. “I think with the very rapid expansion of wind, solar and storage — which makes it possible to store intermittent resources like wind and solar — that it will be relatively easy to get there by his 2030 deadline.”

He acknowledged the goals would be costly but are necessary since current measures alone “are not enough.”

“The challenge is to build for the future, not steal from it,” Brown said, “to live within our means and to keep California ever golden and creative.”

]]>http://blogs.kqed.org/science/2015/01/05/governor-unveils-ambitious-new-climate-goals/feed/0RS13894_IMG_2969-Edit-qutDuring his inaugural address, Gov. Jerry Brown set new goals for California's renewable energy standards that are the most ambitious in the country.
(Andrew Nixon/Capital Public Radio)Interior Secretary: Local Fracking Bans Are ‘Wrong Way To Go’http://blogs.kqed.org/science/2015/01/02/interior-secretary-local-fracking-bans-are-wrong-way-to-go/
http://blogs.kqed.org/science/2015/01/02/interior-secretary-local-fracking-bans-are-wrong-way-to-go/#commentsFri, 02 Jan 2015 14:00:48 +0000http://blogs.kqed.org/science/?p=25752

President Obama’s chief custodian of federal lands says local and regional bans on fracking are taking regulation of oil and gas recovery in the wrong direction.

“I would say that is the wrong way to go,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell told KQED in an exclusive interview. “I think it’s going to be very difficult for industry to figure out what the rules are if different counties have different rules.”

In November, two California counties added themselves to a growing list of local bans on hydraulic fracturing. Voters approved measures in San Benito and Mendocino Counties by wide margins.

“There are a lot of fears out there in the general public and that manifests itself with local laws or regional laws,” Jewell said.

The recent move by New York to extend a statewide ban does not sit especially well with Jewell, who, as a former petroleum engineer, has hands-on experience with fracking.

“There is a lot of misinformation about fracking,” Jewell said. “I think that localized efforts or statewide efforts in many cases don’t understand the science behind it and I think there needs to be more science.”

‘I think that localized efforts or statewide efforts in many cases don’t understand the science.’— Sally Jewell,
U.S. Secretary of the Interior

“These are very troubling comments,” said Kassie Siegel, who directs the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity.

“In essence Secretary Jewell seems to be saying that communities around the country, the governor and public health commissioner of New York, and the over 600,000 people who wrote to the Interior Department urging her to adopt a ban on fracking, don’t understand the science and are just acting out of an irrational fear of fracking,” Siegel said. “It’s insulting, and quite simply wrong.”

Siegel said “numerous studies” have established the health dangers posed by common oilfield chemicals, and noted that “the oil and gas fields on federal land under her jurisdiction are among the biggest sources of methane and ozone pollution in the United States.”

Jewell said she’s counting on government scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey and other agencies to “really help us understand what is happening on the landscapes with hydraulic fracturing and also deep water injections, induced seismicity, those kinds of things.”

Oil and gas companies use fracking, or hydraulic fracturing methods to get at reserves that were previously too costly to pursue. Chemical slurries forced into underground rock fissures at high pressure create channels for crude oil and natural gas to flow to surface wells.

“What we need is sound science that is driving our decision-making,” Jewell said, “and as a regulator that is exactly what we’re relying on as we are looking at releasing our own fracking regulations, which are out for public comment.”

After a public meeting in Napa in December, Jewell told KQED that the public is speaking. “They are concerned about this and they want to make sure any kind of oil and gas activity is done safely and responsibly in terms of their water supply and in terms of their communities.”

And where does that responsibility lie?

“That is an industry responsibility,” Jewell said. “I’ve made it very clear to industry that it’s not my job to defend their practices; it’s their job to both ensure their practices are safe and then communicate with communities that their practices are safe.”

“It is not surprising that with state and federal officials in denial,” Siegel said, “Californians are taking action at the local level to protect themselves from all the perils of oil and gas drilling, and this is a trend that will continue.”

Certainly there are more local measures in the works. The Los Angeles city attorney is drafting a moratorium for consideration by the city council, and officials in Monterey County are also considering placing a fracking ban on the ballot in 2015.

In a move that could generate tens of millions of dollars for the city, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors passed legislation today that would give the city’s Public Utilities Commission a “right of first refusal” to sell electricity to private development projects in the city.

The SFPUC’s Power Enterprise currently sells on the wholesale market electricity that’s left over after municipal uses like powering City Hall. But the city could make about four times as much money selling to private customers at retail rates.

This new arrangement would switch the default power provider for many larger construction projects, and the long-term electricity needs of whatever’s getting built in booming San Francisco, from Pacific Gas and Electric to the city. It would allow the SFPUC to sell electricity to projects on public lands, those developed with public funds and any private projects seeking city approval.

Supervisors’ long-stalled effort to form CleanPowerSF, a city-run, clean-energy alternative to PG&E, looms large in the new law.

“We have had a history of a monopoly in San Francisco, with PG&E, on electricity,” said the ordinance’s author, San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener.

He introduced an amendment Monday suggesting that the SFPUC prioritize selling electricity to CleanPowerSF if and when the program launches.

A PG&E spokesman would not comment on the legislation, but provided KQED with a prepared statement that said the company looks forward to continuing to provide clean energy to San Francisco.

“We will continue to work with the city on this issue,” the statement said.

CleanPowerSF was stalled by the SFPUC last year, when the commission refused to set rates for the greener, and thus more expensive, electricity that would be sold by the city but transmitted across PG&E’s network. The program was set up to automatically enroll residents, who would then have to opt out in order to revert to PG&E power. CleanPowerSF’s additional “generation charge,” which could run anywhere from $5.29 to near $10 per month to match a green alternative proposed by PG&E, would appear on customers’ PG&E bill. A final decision on the rate is pending.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday that Wiener called the “right of first refusal” legislation “complementary” to the CleanPowerSF effort.

The vast majority of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s electricity is hydropower from Hetch Hetchy. (SFPUC)

Wiener says the Power Enterprise “has been starved of resources because it is not more of a retail provider.”

The SFPUC’s Power Enterprise currently takes in about $115 million each year from electricity sales, according to the program’s Assistant General Manager Barbara Hale. About 15 percent of that comes from selling excess energy on the wholesale market.

“We do have available power to sell to additional retail customers,” she said.

More retail-rate customers could mean a $40 million increase in revenue for the SFPUC yearly, Wiener said, and should enlarge the local commission’s footprint in San Francisco’s electricity market.

The San Francisco Business Operators and Managers Association and Chamber of Commerce both oppose the legislation because it will force some private entities to purchase power from the city.

“We have some serious problems with this legislation, supervisor,” BOMA’s Ken Cleaveland told Wiener at a Land Use Committee meeting Monday. “If the city bids out many of its services, why don’t you allow PG&E and the SFPUC to bid contracts for these new developments?”

The city’s rates are equal to or lower than PG&E’s, Hale said, and the power is “100 percent greenhouse gas free.”

Solar companies worry that newly proposed electricity rates from California utilities will make it less appealing for Californians to install solar panels.(Dennis Schroeder/Department of Energy)

Electricity bills could be going up for millions of Californians under a new proposal from the state’s major utilities.

Pacific Gas and Electric is proposing an overhaul of the way customers are charged for electricity, which the utility says would be more fair for many customers. But solar companies see it as a direct attack, because the changes could make installing solar panels less appealing.

The debate is just one more battle in a slow-simmering war between electric utilities and solar companies. The front lines are in the homes of average Californians – like Elmore Williams.

“It’s working great,” Williams says, looking up at the solar panels on his four-bedroom Vacaville home.

Just six months ago, Williams was a solid PG&E customer — his household used more electricity than average for its size. His bill would hit $300 during the summer.

“We had the air conditioner running all thet time,” he says. With the panels, Williams pays a set amount for solar power and much less to PG&E.

“I mean, my wife is just so happy!” He says she tells him, “‘Look how much we’re paying this time. Our PG&E bill is just sixteen dollars this time.’”

One customer may not be a big loss to PG&E, but solar is growing fast.

‘There’s no question – the fixed charge is the worst nightmare of the solar installers.’— Severin BorensteinUC Berkeley

“We have far and away the most customer solar,” says Jonathan Marshall, a spokesman for PG&E. One-quarter of all rooftop solar systems in the country are found in PG&E’s service area.

Marshall says PG&E isn’t against solar. The problem, as he sees it, is that solar customers aren’t paying their share of keeping up the electric grid.

“In fact, they use the grid more than almost anyone,” he says, “because they’re selling power back into it.”

Households with solar still use PG&E’s electricity after the sun goes down, but they also make money back by selling PG&E the extra solar power they generate during the day, giving them lower bills.

Electricity Price Overhaul

Under the newly proposed electric rates, solar customers, along with everyone else, would pay a fixed monthly charge: $10 per month, adding up to $120 a year. Customers with Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric would pay the same.

“That’s to help share the cost of basic infrastructure that we all use and depend on – lines, poles, meters and so forth,” Marshall says.

The second change is to the price of electricity itself. Today, there are four electricity rates for PG&E customers.

The cheapest rate is for “baseline” power use – a certain amount of electricity that PG&E allocates based on where you live. Currently, it costs 15 cents per kilowatt hour.

But use electricity beyond that amount and the prices go up, all the way to 32 cents per kilowatt hour.

(David Pierce/KQED)

Utilities call this “tiered” pricing. Since California’s electricity crisis hit in 2000, the two lower tiers have stayed basically fixed and the higher tiers have been raised. Marshall says the system penalizes heavy users.

“It’s as if going to the grocery store, they had to pay more per gallon of milk just because they have more mouths to feed at the table,” Marshall says. “That doesn’t make much sense. But it is how we today charge for electricity.”

Under the new system, PG&E would charge two prices for electricity. By 2018, 74 percent of customers would see their bills go up by an average of $12 a month compared to today. About a quarter of customers, the heaviest power users, would see their bills decrease by $31 a month.

Harming Conservation?

Some environmental groups say those changes will send an anti-conservation message to California consumers. High electricity prices are meant to be painful, they say, so the heaviest users are encouraged to conserve or invest in energy efficient appliances and home upgrades.

But others say the tiered pricing system as it is today is too complicated for consumers to track.

“If people were really aware of which tier they were on, you would get some conservation,” says Severin Borenstein, an economist at UC Berkeley. “But I think it’s unlikely that many people other than electricity nerds actually know what tier their consumption is on. Most people just think there’s some price for electricity.”

Since PG&E customers with historically lower bills would have higher bills under the new rate structure, it could also encourage conservation among a new group of customers.

Solar Companies Cry Foul

The changes in electricity rates would have a major impact on PG&E’s biggest competitor: the solar industry.

“Investor-owned utilities across the country are fighting rooftop solar,” says Sanjay Ranchod of SolarCity, the largest solar company in California.

How Would Electric Bills Change?

It varies by region. Here’s a sample for customers in the East Bay in 2018:

400 kilowatt hours per month: Your bill goes up by $17 — from $58 to $75.

800 kilowatt hours per month: Your bill goes down by $16 — from $172 to $156.

1,200 kilowatt hours per month: Your bill goes down by $66 — from $302 to $236.

Source: PG&E

Ranchod says if utilities are changing electricity prices, there’s no need to add the $10 monthly charge on top of it. The only thing that does is make solar less attractive at a time when California’s trying to encourage renewable energy.

“A higher and higher fixed charge that customers can’t escape,” he says, “is designed to undermine the value that solar customers can get from their investment.”

Ranchod says it’s a sign that utilities like PG&E see solar as threat. “For a company that has depended on a monopoly, competition from SolarCity or any other solar company is scary.”

The Death Spiral

“There’s no question – the fixed charge is the worst nightmare of the solar installers,” says Severin Borenstein.

He says the monthly fee will make it harder for solar companies to compete, though the cost of solar panels still falling. But in the bigger picture, Borenstein says, this debate is just one more sign that solar is a disruptive technology, somewhat like cell phones versus land lines.

Analysts even have a name for the way solar is cutting into the utility business model: the “death spiral.”

“I think there’s a big question in electricity industry right now about what will happen to utilities,” Borenstein says, “and what their business model will be 10 or 20 or 30 years from now.”

Instead of being power companies, he says, utilities could become electric grid companies, “where they don’t actually bring electricity in, they just shuffle it around between one house and another.”

With such a large solar market, California could be one of the first places this plays out. In the meantime, the California Public Utilities Commission is expected to decide on the new pricing structure in the spring. The rates could go into effect next summer.

U.S. President Barack Obama looks on as Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks during a joint press conference in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on November 12, 2014. Obama began a one-day state visit after the closing of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. (Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images)

The world woke up to excited buzz Wednesday announcing a tentative emission-cutting deal between the U.S. and China, the world’s worst two polluters that together account for almost half of all greenhouse gas emissions on the planet.

The White House trumpteted the agreement that by 2025 would cut U.S. CO2 emissions by 26 to 28 percent from 2005 levels. For its part, China agreed to cap its growth in emissions by 2030 or earlier, and to increase the share of renewable fuels to 20 percent by 2030. The rest of the world today began wondering how, exactly, the non-binding pact would be realized.

“We are at cross-purposes,” said former U.S. Security Official Jamie Metzl, speaking on KQED’s Forum today. “President Obama and Xi Jinping are today saying that this climate pre-agreement — because nothing has been put down on paper — shows what’s possible when we work together. But at the same time, both countries are very aggressively working to advance their position relative to the other.”

For example, Metzl said, the U.S. is moving forward with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that doesn’t currently include China. And China is pursuing its own free trade agreements in the region, while building up its military presence.

“It’s scaring the bejesus, if that’s a San Francisco word, out of its neighbors — Japan, others in the South China Sea,” Metzl said. “And the U.S. is having its so-called pivot to Asia, where we’re talking about trade but also increasing our military presence in the region. So there’s a huge amount of competition and potential room for conflict, and there’s this other story of trying to find a means of cooperation. So climate change — this is certainly very positive, but it doesn’t erase the overall framework, which is one that’s quite concerning.”

The brinksmanship is also playing out domestically, with Republican leaders in the House and Senate decrying the climate deal as a “continuation of the president’s job-crushing policies” and an “unrealistic plan the president would dump on his successor.”

Their ire is directed at the pace of emission reductions that would be required to reach the goal. The U.S. is currently aiming for a 17 percent reduction by 2020, a goal that will have taken 15 years. The deal with China calls for an additional reduction of 10 percent in five years.

“From 2020 to 2025, for the United States to achieve the goals that the President put forward, we would need to double the pace of the reductions to greenhouse gas emissions that we’re currently on track to do,” L.A. Times reporter Neela Banerjee said on Forum. “There’s going to be a political backlash, and it’ll probably take the form of legislation that will be introduced, lawsuits, and — like anything else that’s put forward by this administration — it’s somewhat of a gamble. Will it survive those challenges?”

Banerjee said it’s not just Republicans who may try to stall the deal.

“There are a lot of Democrats from fossil fuel states who may accept that climate change is happening,” she said. “They just don’t want to act on it anytime soon.”

But the effort to reduce greenhouse gases also has allies, and Banerjee some may be found in big business.

“There are more and more companies, including major Fortune 500 multinationals, that are seeing their bottom lines affected by climate change and by threats that are expected from climate change,” she said. “So they might find support in unexpected quarters.”

There’s also a bit a of damper buried in the announcement for anyone celebrating the news as landmark international environmental progress on a subject that’s been intractable. That is, what will replace the coal plants currently generating energy, and pollution, in the two global powers?

“In this ‘agreement,’ when [China] talks about going to 20 percent renewables by 2030, the only way they’re going to do that, it’s not by composting, it’s by nuclear,” Metzl said. “We’re also moving, shifting our energy use away from coal a little bit, and towards natural gas – fracking [hydraulic fracturing]. In China, nuclear’s a big part of this story. In the United States, fracking is a part of this story.”

Listen to the Forum segment below:

]]>http://blogs.kqed.org/science/2014/11/12/u-s-and-china-greenhouse-gas-deal-landmark-move-or-more-hot-air/feed/1Obama JinpingU.S. President Barack Obama looks on as Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) speaks during a joint press conference in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on November 12, 2014. Obama began a one-day state visit after the closing of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. (Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images)